


Chrysalis

by Orockthro



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Female Protagonist, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, POV Leia Organa, Post-Star Wars: A New Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-10-28 10:38:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10829577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orockthro/pseuds/Orockthro
Summary: Most of the Death Star’s wreckage burns up in Yavin IV’s atmosphere, and what doesn’t floats above in orbit like a halo of crumpled death. Their ships are grounded while the sky sizzles with pieces of half-destroyed tie fighters raining down through the ionosphere, and two thirds of the remaining rebel force gets drunk in a haze of victory. Two days after everything, Leia is called into a meeting, and the numbers are laid before her.There were an estimated 1,179,000 people aboard the Death Star, between crews and staff and storm troopers and officers. Two days ago, the Rebel Alliance killed every single one of them.(Post ANH, Princess Leia-- princess of a planet that no longer exists-- has to figure out who she is all over again.)





	Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Merfilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/gifts).



> For Merfilly as a treat for the Fandom 5K exchange. I really enjoyed your prompt, and I hope you like this little exploration of Leia.
> 
> Prompt:  
> "I'd love to see some exploration of Leia the Leader. She is clearly of Rank on Hoth; she briefs the pilots. She was in the strategic command center on Yavin and followed it all very clearly. I want to see more of Leia BEING a Rebel, rather than just a diplomat and politician."

**Chrysalis**

After the Death Star vanishes into a ball of gas and orbiting debris over Yavin IV, there’s too much frenetic energy to feel things. They won a battle, one that will be remembered for centuries, and their pesky little rebellion is shifting into a major galactic force. They are gaining new operatives and recruits every day-- some are defectors from the Empire’s academy, others are simply civilians who finally see the call to action as more than simply a suicide pact. So for a long while, after the medals are given and everyone breathes for the first time in  _ months,  _ the only thing she feels is a manic, nameless energy. 

Most of the Death Star’s wreckage burns up in Yavin IV’s atmosphere, and what doesn’t floats above in orbit like a halo of crumpled death. Their ships are grounded while the sky sizzles with pieces of half-destroyed tie fighters raining down through the ionosphere, and two thirds of the remaining rebel force gets drunk in a haze of victory. Two days after everything, Leia is called into a meeting, and the numbers are laid before them.

There were an estimated 1,179,000 people aboard the Death Star, between crews and staff and storm troopers and officers. Two days ago, the Rebel Alliance killed every single one of them. Most of them likely never even knew they were about to die, or even what the Empire was doing in orbit. The numbers stare at her from the datapad, and splashed up on the large conference room screen. 

Leia excuses herself after the meeting, and goes to her quarters. They’re small, of course. Her political status is immaterial here, although she keeps her title out of respect for Alderaan. But a princess is not a useful playing piece for the Alliance anymore. She’s no longer a senator of Alderaan, because Alderaan is gone, and her cover within the Imperial Senate was destroyed during her capture and torture by Darth Vader. 

She is a princess, but it is now only a word.

She turns the lights to low in her small quarters, and sits on her bed with her feet curled up under her, like she used to as a child. Her mother used to come behind her, when she was young and small, and pull her up onto her lap, and then her father would swoop in and tickle her bare feet. 

She wanted for nothing, growing up with them, and they doted on her. Her mother would always bring her a flower from the royal gardens, whenever she would come home from court. Alderaan’s royal flower, the flotuan blossom, smelled so sweet and pure, Leia would lean her whole face into their soft petals, and breathe them in. The aroma would last, even when the flowers began to wilt and her mother had to return to her duties as Queen. She will likely never smell those flowers again.

There were approximately 2 billion people on Alderaan when it was destroyed. Millions of children, and mothers and fathers. All unilaterally destroyed within seconds, and all of it, because of her.

She compares 2 billion against 1.2 million. They hadn’t known the latter number until after the fact; had it been 2 or 4 or even 6 billion aboard the Death Star instead-- had it been filled with civilians and visiting Imperial families and an entire fledgling generation-- the result would have been the same. The Alliance would still have killed them, even if they had known. Also, because of her. Luke may have fired the torpedoes, but it was her efforts as a covert agent that delivered the plan into his hands.

Leia breathes deeply, and accepts that fact, along with the next one.

They are at war, and she is not a princess any more.

*

By some minor miracle, Han Solo stays. He stays for a day, and then he stays for another two. First, it’s because the debris in the atmosphere makes it hazardous for ships to leave, and then, later, because he says, “It’s not like I have anywhere better to be, Princess. Besides, someone has to teach the kid to swim, or he’s gonna fall in one of these puddles and drown.”

Luke stays, too, but that isn’t a surprise; like her, he also has nowhere to go, and has latched onto the Rebellion as strongly as she has. His losses may be several billion fewer in number, but it’s clear by the fervor by which he surrounds himself with people at all hours of the day and night that he feels the missing parts of his life just as acutely as she does. They are similar like that; the burning need to direct their white-hot anger and youth towards something meaningful. And the Alliance needs all the good pilots it can get, and all the war heroes.

“Come join us,” Solo says, a wide sly grin on his face, likely at the thought of her in bathing attire. 

She shakes her head. “Unlike you, I have better things to do with my time than go splashing about. The Empire is still out there, you know. There are reports that Darth Vader survived and is amassing troops to attack.”

“Come on, Princess... There’s got to be other people who can handle some of that--”

“Good day, Captain Solo.”

Three and a half days later, they get a tip from their contacts on Rodia that the Empire is deploying ships headed their way: Yavin IV is no longer safe, and debris in the sky or not, they need to evacuate and skatter. She works with a grizzled general named Carlist Rieekan, whose name is Alderaanian, and whose face is familiar, around the nose. He might be one of her father’s cousins, and it hits her in a rush of cold grief that she’s now the keeper of her lineage.

They don’t talk about Alderaan. They map out safe harbors across the galaxy, and send skatter orders to their forces, with instructions to rendezvous at one of the Rim planets, Ryloth, in one months and four days, standard time. 

Solo is leaning on the wall outside her quarters after the orders go out. “You should come with me on the Falcon,” he says. For once he’s not smiling. “I’ll make sure you get there in one piece.”

“On that thing? One trip aboard your... ship... was enough for me, thank you.” She doesn’t actually mind it, although it’s covered in grease and littered with half-repaired parts, and none of it looks like it’s passed an inspection since its original build date. But she should be with the Alliance, not with a smuggler who will cut and run as soon as the wind changes. 

Alderaan is dead. And she needs to be with the people that will avenge it.

He’s still leaning against the wall. His clothes look recently sent through the press, and she wonders who he conned into doing that for him. “Fine. Suit yourself. I’ll see you in a few weeks, then.”

She waits for him to say that he’s heading back to Tatooine, or to Corellia, or to anywhere else. But he doesn’t, and she finally breaks and asks, “You’re still going to the rendezvous? I’d have thought you’d take your reward and leave.”

He shrugs. “Luke needs someone to keep an eye on him. I’ll probably take off after that. I don’t have a death wish, you know-- I’m not actually going to  _ join _ this little rebellion of yours. But I’ll see him-- and you-- to the next location.”

Han Solo wasn’t in the meeting where they discussed casualties. It was for leadership only, and they are not so desperate yet that wayward smugglers fit into their chain of command. Her title is still princess out of respect, but her role is rapidly shifting out of her comfort zone. No more councils, no more pleading for the Imperial Senate to wake up and realize what was happening. Now they are at war, and Leia is as much a soldier as anyone else. 

As much a soldier, maybe, as Han Solo. He wasn’t in the meeting, but his eyes are a little dark, despite his smooth façade. Unlike Luke, his world has always been a little broader, a little dirtier-- a bit like his ship. He might not know the numbers, but he probably has an idea.

“I’ll check with General Reeikan. Depending on our transport situation, I might need a ride after all. We lost a lot of ships here.”

He grins. “I’ll tell Chewie to comb out his pelt, your Majesty.”

*

Luke is grinning like a child when she comes aboard with her bag. It’s refreshing to see him so unencumbered by everything, and she smiles, too. 

“You made it! Han wasn’t sure--”

Han steps around the corner from the cockpit and leans against the wall with his arms crossed, but he’s smiling, too. “Your Worship,” he says, and mock bows. “You bless us with your presence after all.”

She rolls her eyes. “Luke, show me to my room?”

He does, and Han and Chewie snark behind her in Shyriiwook. 

The guest quarters of the Millennium Falcon leave a great deal to be desired. It’s a dura-steel bunk, covered in a thin layer of foam bedding, with storage drawers below. Her last trip on the Falcon was long enough to sleep, but she’d stayed huddled in one of the chairs by the holo game the entire time. She’d ached and hurt, both physically and emotionally, and had no interest in giving over to dreams. 

Now, though, she eyes it skeptically.

“This is it?”

Luke shrugs, sheepish. It’s a sweet look on him. It’s easy to forget he’s about her age and an impressively competent pilot, and not actually some kid they picked up on the side of the road. “We washed the sheets for you,” he says, as if doing something so basic is on par with giving her the comforts of the universe. 

“Well that’s a relief.”

She doesn’t know how to do this-- Senate negotiations were one thing, and she’d been trained towards that vocation since childhood. But that social navigation was always layers upon layers of half-truths, platitudes, and strategy. Winning the attention of the fellow Senator who would be likely to vote your way on the rice tariff; smoothing things over with the delegation working to filibuster-- everything had a political end-game. There are no politics on the Millennium Falcon, only two men, a Wookie, and a pair of droids. 

Her only comfort is that it’s exceptionally clear that Luke, and probably Han and Chewie as well, are just as clueless how to act around her as she is with them. She sits on the bed, and Luke does too, and they’re quiet for awhile, until he asks if she wants him to leave.

“No,” she says. She’s not a politician anymore, she reminds herself. Her curiosity can be appeased without signaling weakness or ignorance. “Tell me about General Kenobi.”

He sits back a bit, until he’s pressed against the ugly, scuffed bulkhead, turned towards her so his bare feet are pulled up on the foam mattress. “Alright, but I don’t know him very well. He was just a crazy old man who lived out in the wastes, you know? We used to joke about him, Biggs and I, but we were never brave enough to actually go out there, and I only met him a handful of times when I was very young. My uncle warned me off going to find him, too, said he was a dangerous old wizard. He was out there my entire life, I think, just... living in the sand. Alone.”

She remembers Biggs-- that dark-haired pilot with the easy, confident smile. He’s dead, too. Everyone in Luke’s story is dead. No wonder he’s latched onto Han so fully; Solo is the least likely of all of them to die, what with his Wookie co-pilot at his back, and his needle-sharp self preservation instincts. 

“I didn’t know he was a Jedi, let alone a general from the clone wars, until he saved my life and Artoo recognized him. He knew my father, he said. And so I followed him across half the galaxy to save you.”

He doesn’t tell the rest of the story, about how Kenobi is now dead. She was there, after all. He cocks his head to the side, like he’s listening to something. 

“He knew your family, didn’t he? Old Ben?”

She closes her eyes and mirrors his posture. “Yes. But I never met him, I don’t think. There were pictures of him and my father together, a few holovids from the wars. All I knew was that he was on Tatooine, in hiding, and that he was once a great Jedi general. I’d run out of people to ask for help. Everyone in the Imperial Senate was too happy being hand fed by the Empire to do anything.”

He nods at her, as if he-- a moisture farmer turned rebel pilot who hadn’t seen a body of water larger than a puddle until four days ago-- has any idea the great magnitude of wealth the Empire doles out to keep its citizens and politicians from questioning its actions. 

Then he surprises her. “The Hutts do that on Tatooine. We mostly stayed out of their way, but they control everything down there. You have a couple of choices as a small-time player on Tatooine. You can get out of their way-- that’s what my aunt and uncle did. They paid their dues when enforcement came around, and they kept quiet. They never made more money than they were supposed to, and they never got in anyone’s way. Or, you can go in with the Hutts. You end up a lot richer that way.”

“That’s it? Those are the two choices?” She bristles, a little. 

He laughs. “Of course not. Then there’s the people who fight back.”

“You weren’t one of them.”

He shakes his sandy-haired head. “No. But I might have been, someday. And I guess I am, now. Here. We’re the people who don’t pay up to the Hutts when the bruisers come by, and we don’t take the drugs and slaves as payment to keep quiet about the bruisers and the people’s whose farms burn down who don’t pay up.”

She looks at him for awhile. “So what does that make us?”

His mouth splits into a grin, and he’s once again reduced to a young-faced pilot with life budding out of him. “I have no idea.”

*

They spend a week floating in the middle of nowhere, down for repairs-- Leia can’t say she’s surprised-- and they’re saved by a middleweight freighter dubbed ‘Flightless’ hauling mining slag for re-sale on the mid-rim. But Captain Solo knows the ship and greets the Captain warmly, so Leia suspects the Flightless is hauling more than what shows up on her ship’s manifest.

The Captain of the Flightless is a woman named Piflar who teaches her how to punch a man in the throat. And how to resist interrogation drugs. Piflar takes one look at Leia, surrounded by two human men and a Wookie one, and takes pity on her. She spirits her away to the Flightless for a few hours a day during that long week of Han’s shouting and Chewie’s frustrated bellowing and Luke’s short attempts at mediation, and Leia remembers what it’s like to be a woman, not just a person. 

“Dare I ask how you met Captain Solo?” Leia asks. The Flightless is a bit smaller than the Falcon, and Piflar appears to be flying it alone. It seems like a lonely life. 

Piflar laughs. “I saved him, after he got himself in a scrape he couldn’t get out of. Not unlike right now-- this damage he’s using my parts to repair is from a firefight, not neglect. He’s a good man, you know.”

Goodness is a qualitative measurement, and almost all of Han’s bluster has been self-serving. He came back for Luke, out in front of the Death Star, though. She swallows. 

“And you just helped him? Not many people stick their neck out for people they don’t know.”

“Of course not. I held that Wookie at gunpoint and stole half his food. But he was running from the Empire, even back then, and I have no love for the Imperials.” She pauses and rubs a hand across her smooth-skinned head. “He’s spent most of his life running away from things, you know. It’s nice to see him running towards something for a change. Maybe next time I rescue him he’ll have figured out what  _ it  _ is.”

Piflar winks at her. And then she sits Leia down and pours her a long drink. “Your name is Alderaanian. Please, tell me. Do you know if anyone made it off?”

And Leia cries with Piflar, whose son was hauling scrap between Alderaan and Tepasi on the Commenor Run, and who almost certainly died with everyone Leia’s ever loved.

After they dry their tears, Piflar looks at the nearly-invisible needle scars from the interegation droid that splay across her shoulders like starbursts, and touches each one gently with her green fingertips. “It will hurt, if they catch you again. These won’t change that,” she says, referring to the equally nearly-invisible pills that she puts in a ring. They look like miniature pearls, and lovely ones at that. But each one is filled with adrenaline and painkillers, enough to keep her conscious and aware enough to push through torture. 

“I don’t mind if it hurts,” she says. She means it. She remembers, vividly, the way the drugs burned through her veins in the detention center on the Death Star. She brings the memory up voluntarily and lets it course through her like the drugs did. “I want to remember everything, and give nothing up.”

Piflar pats her shoulder. “You would have liked my son, I think.”

Leia gives her the rendezvous details, and the date. “You’d be welcome. We always need pilots.”

“Maybe,” Piflar says. And then the week is over, the Falcon is back up and running on more than just their dwindling life support systems, and Piflar and the Flightless are a pinprick in the sky. 

Leia runs a thumb over the tiny white pills that dot the outside of her ring, and flexes her fist as the Falcon hums to life beneath her feet, and Han gives a whoop of joy.

*

On Ryloth, Leia finds out what she is. 

They have allies here, thousands of them. Ryloth is still under Imperial occupation, which makes it both challenging and brilliant as a rendezvous point. Ships fly into the orbit of a nearby moon, and shuttle down one by one under the cover of planet-dark. 

Solo, unsurprisingly, pitches a fit and refused to hand over his ship to the pilot assigned to it. “Absolutely not,” he says, and launches into a tirade about how his ship is not technically under the Alliance’s command, and neither is he. 

“You’re not in command here,” she flings back. “This is an Alliance operation, you’re just the taxi driver.”

“A taxi driver? You were begging for a ride, Princess. I’m the only reason you even got off that rock!”

“Begged? You’re lucky I put in a word to the command staff to even let you tag along, Captain Solo.”

Luke and Chewie intervene, eventually, when their raised voices carry deep enough into the ship to rouse out even the droids. 

“Fine,” she says. “Fly in and dock, but this bucket of bolts is marked as wanted, and if you get us all killed because you’re too stubborn--”

“Relax, Princess,” he says, as he shuts off the comm forcibly. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I know some people in his port, and I know how to get in and out... quietly.”

“Smuggler.” 

She means it like an insult, but he just grins, wryly and says, ”Princess.” 

He says smooth words to an Imperial at the check-in and convinces him--somehow-- that their ship’s number is that belonging to a short-range Imperial scout ship, not the easily-remembered Millennium Falcon, and sweet-talks a Rodian who is manning the import/export check. She holds her breath the entire flight in, until the Falcon has landed in a commercial shipping berth, and they are picked up outside of Nabat by one of their contacts.

His name is Tu’lel and after they’re shepherded away from the public eye and trekking gamely through the skyscraper tall forest undergrowth, he turns to her and says, “We were worried you’d been captured, Princess.”

She blinks at him. “I’m sorry to have worried you. We were delayed due to ship repairs, and I didn’t want to risk a transmission.”

Tu’lel nods, but there’s a strange giddiness to his face. “Everyone will be so relieved.”

Luke shares a look with her, and she wonders why Tulel hasn’t said the same thing to him. He’s the pilot who destroyed the Death Star, and already a poster-child of their revolution. If it weren’t for Luke, the Rebellion would have been wiped out in a single blink. Like Alderaan.

Tu’lel doesn’t catch any of her confusion, or if he does, he’s censured enough about it to have a future in politics, when this is all over. He simply guides them through the treacherous forest path, smiling the whole while. 

Their meeting point is a cavern deep under the heart of the forest outskirts. Its rock walls are thick enough and coated with a naturally-formed mineral that prevents radar detection, and has been a hideout for the Twi’lek for centuries. Now, it’s a hideout for them, too. Tu’lel brings them into it, and the mass of bodies conversing soberly below the hundreds of glittering stalactites above, grow quiet.

Their number has grown. Four hundred rebels left Yavin IV in a rag-tag fleet of ships over a month ago. Although they’ve deployed people and ships to missions in the meantime, this is the first time since leaving Yavin IV that they’ve all reconvened. Here, in a steel-lined cave, buried beneath Ryloth’s forests, they are nearly a thousand. She scans the data stream for The Flightless, but can’t be sure if Piflar came or not, not when more than half their number are using false identities and forged docking documents.

One Twi-lek man, with scars on his chin and nose, approaches her after she gives a speech that echoes in the enormous space. 

“I’m so happy you are alive, Princess,” he says. “When Alderaan was destroyed, I feared I was seeing all of our futures. But you are here. So not everything is lost.”

She thanks him, because she doesn’t know him, or know how he knows her. But Ryloth has been fighting against the Empire for as long as the Empire has existed. Its people have suffered, endlessly, under Palpatine's reign. Alderaan was snuffed out between two breaths, but Ryloth grinds out each day under Palpatine’s heel, resistance after resistance effort sent to the slave mines and the executioner’s ring.

She takes his hand and covers it with hers. “You’re still here, too.”

He smiles, like she’s given him some sort of gift. She realizes, suddenly, that she’s a symbol to him. Not a person, really, but proof that while billions of lives were snuffed out, hers wasn’t. 

It sits in her belly like a stone. She’s the shining light of the rebellion-- a picture of hope.

It’s not enough. The ring on her hand, Piflar’s gift, is heavy. Each little pill contains enough adrenaline to sail her through a three day interrogation. She has nine of them.

Leia squares her shoulders and breathes in the damp, humid air. Even this far down underground, Ryloth’s forest permeates everything. Verdant life seeps in, containing the scent of fresh blossoms and death-rot both. It’s not unlike the smell of the greenhouses on Alderaan that her mother used to love.

Leia is here. That’s what she is. She’s a princess in name, a senator in absentia, a daughter in mourning, a symbol to those that need it. 

She’s here, and she’s ready to fight. 


End file.
